Description

Last updated at 22:49, 19 Aug 2017Uploaded at 17:27, 1 May 2017

A long time ago someone made a Cheat Engine script which caused all of the loaded enemies in the game to walk towards the player. It accomplished this by setting their "return home" point to the same coordinates as the player's current position, causing the enemies to walk to that location. It was a great concept but it caused a few big issues. It affected all NPCs that were loaded, including friendly ones, and both hostile and friendly NPCs would end up walking off ledges and just die. It also didn't balance each NPC/area individually, so some areas would completely overwhelm the player (particularly if you are using other mods such as the Adrenaline Mode mod).

This is a new mod that is inspired by the concept of that old Cheat Engine script, although it works in a much different way and is done entirely through the game's files. What it does is it significantly increases the distance that enemies see and hear the player, and removes the limit on how close the player must be for them to initiate combat. This means they will see you from much, much farther away, and will initiate combat as soon as they see you. I have also virtually removed the limits on how far enemies can travel from their spawn points so it'll be much harder to run away from a fight.

This mod will only affect hostile NPCs, so you don't have to worry about friendly NPCs jumping off of cliffs or wandering around. I have also manually balanced a few select areas of the game, such as Lost Izalith, so the player isn't completely overwhelmed.

Two alternate editions of the mod are available that emulate the behavior of the original Aggression Mod by making all nearby enemies aggressive, whether or not they have seen you. They just need to be within a certain distance of you to automatically sense that you are there. Unlike the original Aggression Mod, however, this only affects enemies within a limited range of the player rather than all enemies that are loaded in the game. There is one edition which will only attract enemies within a moderate distance around the player, and another edition which attracts enemies from very far away. The latter one is not recommended, but is there as an option.

All three editions of the mod also double the amount of health enemies have, increase their resistances by 20% and increase their damage output by 80% (these buffs are optional). There are several mods out there that buff enemies in this way - both in the form of edited game files and Cheat Engine scripts - and this is just another version of that. The only real difference between mine and all the others is that I chose not to add the red aura to the affected enemies. I only wanted the enemies to have the boosted stats of Gravelord Phantoms without having to look like them.

When you download and extract the mod you should see two "dvdbnd3" files. Place those two files in the "DATA" folder within the game's installation directory. There should already be two files there by the same name and I recommend you back up the originals before overwriting them. Once you've placed the files in that folder, overwriting the originals, you're all set.

If you don't know where the Dark Souls installation directory is, follow these steps: Open Steam, go to your library, right-click on the game, select properties, go to the local files tab, then click the button to browse the local files.

I appreciate all feedback and will consider all suggestions to help improve this mod as much as I can.